


The Self Is Not Weightless

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Exiled TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Families of Choice, Found family siblings though, Gen, Ghostbur is there too, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, TommyInnit Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Traumatized Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF), Unbeta'd, Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29134014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: It's easy, as time goes by and the story sprawls, to forget how tragic of a life Tommy has lived. Tommy, though, can't forget. He carries it with him.-Technoblade tells him to die like a hero and Tommy laughs in the face of three monsters: two withers and a pig.Theseus didn't die in battle. He died of misplaced loyalty.If the myths were true, Tommy would already be gone.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), No Romantic Relationship(s), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 35
Kudos: 431





	The Self Is Not Weightless

**Author's Note:**

> Please watch [this animatic](https://youtu.be/WWmO_L3JSj8), because this fic would not exist without it.

Wilbur jokes, after one too many close calls, that the gods must favor Tommy.

It was fate that led them together, after all. A relentless leader and his scruffy right-hand man. Wilbur has to defend his choice in partners to the waiting people many times over, but he does so without public complaint.

(Tommy gets plenty in private. _“Talk less,”_ Wilbur reminds him.)

No one knows where he came from or how he ended up in his position. His childhood’s a mystery, spare gossip for the barracks. In some stories, he’s raised by raccoons; in others, a woman whose name stretches across the stars.

In very few, mostly told to Tubbo, he was small, sickly, and alone.

All Wilbur knows is the baby bird he tucked under his own broken wing, this boy with fire in his every movement. All Wilbur cares for is how bright he can make the kid burn.

Tommy is a natural disaster. Tommy is a survivor.

Tommy is in charge of the 5th Battalion and no one but Wilbur believes they will succeed. So, of course, it makes everything worse when they don't.

Surrender is imminent and it is on his shoulders, compressed into his structured uniform, the one he’s already outgrown.

Wilbur holds his left hand and promises him they did their best. Fundy gives him a look and Tommy wonders if he’ll die by the sword of another presumed ally.

Grabbing his only possessions and crossing enemy lines, Tommy pushes forward. If he does not have the respect of his people, he will earn it.

He intends to strike a deal; keep the game going for its most powerful players.

They humor him. Wilbur trusts him enough not to give him advice.

Only as the arrow strikes him in the head does he regret never telling anyone how much they mean to him.

Still, Tommy is a force. Tommy persists.

"The gods must smile down upon you," Niki tells him, expression unreadable.

Shadows stretch and dance across the medical tent, mocking his stature, his weakness, his willingness to die for something that everyone had already given up on.

"Why are they above me?" Tommy asks in return.

Tommy trades love for war, items for abstract concepts. He gives everything for Wilbur and Wilbur’s praise is almost enough to fill the hole in his chest. A treacherous thing, ripe with betrayal he will not humor.

(Those discs were his and only his. They _mattered_ to him. It’s not _fair⎼_ )

L’manberg is a country entirely its own and maybe that is enough.

Tubbo cries and tells him he’s grateful Tommy’s alive. Tommy’s not sure if there was ever going to be another outcome.

_“How does a king get his power?”_

_“They must be blessed by a god.”_

_“Who’s the god, then?”_

_“Who made Eret king?”_

Wilbur likes to tempt fate.

He did it, unintentionally, by saving Tommy; a soul bound for death. He does it, with purpose, by building on land that is not his.

He keeps doing it. He gives himself power and wants the people to uphold it.

Tommy has thoughts on this, on what happens to great men on the battlefield when there is no more blood to spill. On the way Wilbur has never worn armor, yet seems to fear nothing.

On the way he’s two-thirds the age of his general and has seen death twice as many times.

( _“Go home,”_ Wilbur had told him. _“You give everything to this country or you get out.”_ )

Tommy voices none of his opinions. He’s already made his choice.

When he was still just a flightless robin and L’manberg was little more than a forest, home to nothing but promise, he’d built his nest within it. He’d stayed.

He’d agreed to always stand by Wilbur, no matter what comes.

It was war then. It’s politics now.

Wilbur calls them _family_ over campaign posters and Tommy thinks it’s enough.

Tommy isn’t bred to speak over the quiet of peacetime. He tries, but he blunders in an argument against one of the men who’s always been against him.

Desperate, he places his trust in yet another person who greets him with a closed fist.

Man wins against morality, as it always does. Greed and spite rule over a place that has only demanded sacrifice and Tommy has to wonder what the point is, after all of this.

"Are we the bad guys?" Wilbur asks him as they traverse the forest.

How do you answer a man who has his mind made up?

The gods offer no answers to Tommy’s questions, just assistance.

The sweeping search done by Schlatt’s men never quite reaches the place Wilbur’s decided to claim as theirs. The cold press of the ravine floor doesn’t really bother him. He manages to find some supplies in a small cave.

The world is a toy chest and Tommy is their favorite item; it’d be strange if they broke him.

They don't care about Wilbur, though. They give him a gift horse and watch him eat himself alive.

He wants the one thing that’s always mattered to him gone and Tommy’s not sure where that leaves them.

Tommy calls them brothers with a knife pointed to his ribcage. Wilbur tells him to fight a beast he has no chance of beating, so he does.

(He’s called the blood god, but Tommy has never cared about the divine. Technoblade has Tubbo’s blood on his hands and he deserves to suffer for it.)

Wilbur is adored, despite his loss. Niki brings them bread. Quackity decides to change sides. Tommy has never once swayed from his position as right-hand man.

Even Fundy returns, clutching a book full of secrets that spill off the page, the son Wilbur thought he’d never see again.

None of them know what Wilbur has planned.

No matter how much support he receives, his fate has already been decided. He is the favorite of a false prophet.

Technoblade never contests his vanity title, his knuckles still purple across Tommy’s skin. Wilbur mocks Tommy for his determination and promises loyalty in the same breath.

The two of them destroy the world together.

L’manberg falls and Technoblade attacks and Wilbur stands silent, watching the chaos in a hollowed out part of the hill behind where the podium stood. His expression is more victorious than Tommy’s ever seen it.

Tommy remembers the softness of a man with confidence beyond his abilities; the sharp smile in his proclamation that _freedom is having nothing._ Tommy and Wilbur have never been anything other than together, in war and banishment, in security and madness.

That is, until Wilbur slumps over, a sword embedded in his chest.

He’s dead and he’s left Tommy behind.

Tommy’s used to being alone, but this is different. He’s not been given nothing, this time. He’s lost it all.

Technoblade tells him to die like a hero and Tommy laughs in the face of three monsters: two withers and a pig.

Theseus didn't die in battle. He died of misplaced loyalty.

If the myths were true, Tommy would already be gone.

  
  


_“What are they doing for Wilbur?”_

_“Nothing. They aren’t even planning a funeral.”_

_“That... doesn’t seem right.”_

_“Exiled men are meant to die in disgrace.”_

Tubbo stands at the metaphorical cliffside, on top of obsidian separating land that’s all the same. The walls are silent and so are the people Tommy once wished for admiration from.

They don’t matter anymore. Especially not when Tubbo decides that someone else’s idea is more important than what Tommy thought was invaluable.

(How long ago were they soldiers on the same battlefield? When did their old uniform’s meaning change from unity to mockery?)

There are a thousand Lycomedes, yet Tommy lives. He wonders who Theseus must be, if not him.

It’s still him that’s being exiled though, the tightrope of the past crumbling down onto the path he’s so used to walking.

Fundy’s expression tells him nothing and no one’s there to tell Tommy to be quiet anymore, so he isn’t.

“Tubbo, you can’t turn into what you hate! You can’t be the next Schlatt.”

He’s pleading, he knows.

(Tubbo won’t turn into what he hates. He just never hated Schlatt.)

Tubbo shrugs. “As long as I can’t be the next Schlatt, you can’t be the next Wilbur.”

The statement curls around Tommy’s throat and squeezes.

He’s not sure if it’s the idea of it being true or false that hurts him. It’s not as though it’s a fair trade either way.

There are reasons to want to be Wilbur.

(He died happy. Some days that’s more than enough.)

Tommy is taken from the scraps of love and home and hope he’s been able to hold onto. Led away from the country that’s long cradled his cracked skin and chipped bones.

They travel across the ocean in silence.

The place they arrive at is foreign. His boat, the only way back, is broken; the invisible string tying him to Wilbur is stretched taut.

Ghostbur has come along, kept him company with the metronome of the downpour.

His items are taken and then it’s just the two of them.

The sky clears as he begins to collect materials for survival.

“The gods must be pleased,” Ghostbur remarks.

The land is vast and barren. Tommy has no one once more.

“I'm sure they are.”

Tommy looks out at the sea and falters at his own reflection. He can almost see his tethers; the ropes that bind him to his burdens and dig into his skin.

They lead in every direction. To the people who’ve sent him away. To the gods who await with grins. To the dead man carrying blue dye, breaking promises he can’t remember.

Tommy has nothing and he still isn’t free.

Technoblade visits upon Ghostbur’s request and sees none of it.

He repeats the story of Theseus once more and Tommy wants to ask him what makes him so sure that he’s telling the right story. Theseus was the king of Athens and Tommy is not the one who wears a crown.

(He should read about Sisyphus, if he wants his next monologue to be accurate.)

_“I was right.”_

_“About what?”_

_“You’re exiled, aren’t you?”_

_“So are you.”_

Dream comes once a day to collect Tommy’s items like offerings. Tommy doesn’t care for the displays of power or the punishment for actions he does not regret, but he complies with every demand.

Tommy is not a worshipper, but it seems as though Dream intends to make him one.

It’s Dream’s way of reordering the world. Tommy is the only one who has never feared him. 

(Tommy wonders how much time it will take to get him to kneel.)

Some days Dream tries to fill the role Tubbo left vacant, laughter ringing across the ocean and echoing into Tommy’s subconscious. Other times he watches Tommy struggle, porcelain mask impassive and taunting.

Most of the time he’s everything and nothing, all at once.

Tommy begins to count the seconds between visits. His stuff is burned and handed back to him as gifts.

Dream lets him fly, once. Maybe for the fun of it, maybe to watch him hurtle to the ground.

Tommy has never been Icarus, no sun close enough to melt wings he’s never had.

On this distant land, away from home and under constant, careful watch, things are different. Tommy is sure he has fallen.

It’s only a matter of time before he drowns.

When he realizes he’s lost count of the days, Tommy stops and settles and looks at where he is. He watches his brother’s ghost pick flowers and sway in the wind. He feels the chill settle into his bones, the wind through his threadbare clothing.

Tommy wonders if it’s time to give up.

He’s lived enough life for several people. The youngest military leader this world will probably ever see, vice president to his closest confidant; he’s gained everything from nothing and then lost it all.

It’s more than some people ever see. He gambled and won.

The game kept going when he didn’t want it to, but what point is there in blaming the universe for what was always going to happen at some point?

Tommy never played cards in Pogtopia or placed bets in new L’manberg. He believes you have a set amount of luck.

(They wager potatoes, he stakes his life.)

It’s all run out, now.

Tommy sits in the Nether with his legs swinging over the walkway’s edge. His hands are an inch away from the reaper’s, the distance easily crossed by a surprise attack by a creature or a poorly timed gust of mysterious wind.

If he concentrates, he can almost hear Wilbur’s voice. An echo of one of his speeches from the revolution; the sentiment that success is born from sacrificing everything.

 _“I have,”_ he wants to reply. _“I did. I will.”_

Tommy is the aftermath of a hurricane. Tommy is broken and tired.

The fire calls to him, beckons like an old friend. It offers sanctuary from the torment, a double bar line between him and whoever else decides to take up his mantle.

It sings the L’manberg anthem to him. Its voice is sweet.

It promises him peace.

In its haphazard pattern he can see his own memory, a mirror to his soul.

_Wilbur calling Tommy his brother without hesitation and holding out the hand closest to his heart. Tubbo asking him what it’s like, having come so close to the end._

Tommy leans forward, ready to sink into the embrace of what’s always been waiting for him.

It’s Dream’s hand that pulls him back from the edge.

_"It’s not your time to die yet, Tommy.”_

_“It’s never my time to die.”_

_“That’s true.”_

_The gods keep their favorites alive._

**Author's Note:**

> To conclude:
> 
> \- Achilles Come Down made this fit together so perfectly; everything from the motif to the myth of Sisyphus (the French muttered in the background of the song)  
> \- Sisyphus, if you don't feel like googling, twice escaped death, and was cursed by the gods to forever repeat the same menial task of rolling a boulder up a hill  
> \- I had the death stuff written before I realized the parallels and I'm not gonna lie, I'm proud of myself :)  
> \- Check out my Tumblr! Same @, I spend too much time on there


End file.
